I'm having a great time as co-host of the "This Ain't Your Dad's Java" podcast we started back in late July. Eric Klein, my boss and the VP of Java Marketing, is host and Jennifer Winger is our producer. Our idea is to have episodes more or less weekly and talk about all things Java. We'll share news of what's going on in the Java product group at Sun, have a special guest to chat with us about a topic of particular interest, and introduce cool new Java products from all corners of the marketplace.

The title of the podcast means more than you might think. The breadth, presence, and scope of Java in the world today is extraordinary - the result of over a dozen years of innovation and inspiration by innumerable contributors at Sun and elsewhere. We could spin up a podcast on just that and be busy for a long time to come.

The big story, though, and what has all of us at Sun so excited, is where we are taking Java. It's about immersive, media rich, highly stylized applications and services that are built collaboratively by developers, designers, scripters, artists and others to take full advantage of the unsurpassed ubiquity of the Java platform and the pervasiveness of the Internet. It's a time of rapid evolution and explosive growth, and while there's an awful lot yet to happen at Sun and elsewhere it's clear that what's emerging "ain't your dad's Java".

We've recorded six episodes so far with topics and guests covering the history of Java (James Gosling), Java gaming (Chris Melissinos our Chief Gaming Officer), Java strategy and futures (Jeet Kaul, VP of Java Engineering), Java in TV and Media (Bill Sheppard our Chief Digital Media officer), and JavaFX (Param Singh, Sr. Director of Mktg for JavaFX). We like to get our guests to reveal a bit about themselves and have had a lot of fun, perhaps to the point of saying things we might oughtn't.

Our podcast is available via the iTunes store and cross platform via Feedburner. You'll find an icon and link in the navbar of my blog. We're hoping to get questions from listeners and answer them on the air, so if you have anything you'd like to know about Java drop us a line at aintyourdadsjava@sun.com

Eric, Jenn and I, on behalf of all our guests past and future, hope you'll give us a listen and let us know what you think.